‘Contemporary antisemitism is often strange and difficult to pin down, often disappearing into a miasma of claims and counter-claims. This is another example.’

Can we agree at least on this: today’s Sun front page, featuring Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich, is cruel, abusive and puerile. We should also be able to agree that savage satire of politicians is inevitable and even desirable in a free press.

But there’s another question where no agreement is going to be possible: was the front page of the Sun surreptitiously antisemitic?

It’s fair game to use an unflattering picture of Miliband – and the picture certainly is unflattering – but why this one? And why use it again, a year after its first use? After all, Miliband’s geekiness provides an embarrassment of riches to those seeking his ridicule. And why point out that this is a bacon sandwich? And then emphasise it with jibes about “pig’s ears”, “porkies” and “saving our bacon”?

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It’s hard to avoid sensing a whiff of antisemitism here. Miliband, after all, could be the first Jewish-born prime minister since Disraeli. Damning Miliband with porcine satire seems – like the Daily Mail’s exposé of his “Britain-hating” Jewish émigré father – to radiate some nasty connotations. There is a long history of taunting Jews by associating them with pigs. That the Labour party itself was accused of similarly coded antisemitism when the (Jewish) Michael Howard was Conservative leader in no way obviates the need to take this seriously.

Yet the more one delves into this affair, the less clear it becomes. First, there is the vexed question of intention: did the Sun journalists who wrote and designed the front page mean to evoke these coded references? Maybe, maybe not, although perhaps the fact that Rupert Murdoch and the neoconservative right he represents purport to be philosemitic these days might tip the balance of probabilities into the “not” camp. However, that doesn’t mean unintentional, unconscious antisemitism isn’t possible – journalists working against time and under pressure to deliver a Tory victory are certainly susceptible to seizing on the meanest image they can find, without thinking through what it connotes.

Whether or not there was antisemitic intent behind the front page, the issue is complicated even further by the question of how far the Sun’s readership will actually get the references. It is by no means clear to me how aware the public is of Miliband’s Jewishness. While he never hides it, in interviews he is as likely to emphasise the universal resonances of his father’s story as he is to frame it Jewishly.

Then there is the question of Miliband’s complex relationship with the British Jewish community. There are now, as there always have been, plenty of Jews involved in the Labour party, and it appears that a Jewish Labour candidate may even overturn a Tory majority in the heavily Jewish seat of Finchley and Golders Green that Margaret Thatcher once held. Yet there has been strong criticism of Miliband by some members of the Jewish community for his stance on Israel and, in particular, for backing a vote to recognise a Palestinian state last autumn. Certainly, Miliband is in no way a candidate who is universally loved in British Jewish circles. Publicly eating a bacon sandwich is hardly likely to endear him further.

So where does all this leave us? With a front page that may or may not be read as antisemitic, that may or may not have been intended to be read as antisemitic by an audience that may or may not know that its target is actually Jewish, and who embraces and is embraced by the Jewish community in an often lukewarm fashion.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, contemporary antisemitism is often strange and difficult to pin down, often disappearing into a miasma of claims and counter-claims. This is yet another example.

Despite the ambiguity of the front page, we can probably safely make two modest conclusions: first, some Jews in Britain are likely to be disturbed by it (in fact, from my social media feeds, some certainly are) and that is worth at least taking seriously. Second, if Miliband becomes prime minister the prevalence of this sort of image will need to be tracked – if they become more common it will be harder to give an innocent explanation.